


Je m’en vais

by jeanjosten



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Afterlife, Character Death, Character Turned Into a Ghost, Ghost Drifting, Grief/Mourning, M/M, The Perfect Court (All For The Game)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-17
Updated: 2018-01-17
Packaged: 2019-03-06 03:08:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13402140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeanjosten/pseuds/jeanjosten
Summary: Truly, the story of how I died isn’t a story anyone wants to hear. I won’t tell it. I prefer the story of how I survived.It starts with a boy, and his name is Nathaniel.





	Je m’en vais

**Author's Note:**

> Or, a swarm of words without any fucking dialogue, fucking thanks Gab. I don't know what to tell you, I'm sad now. Someday I might stop writing about Jean's death. [Listening to this](https://youtu.be/xRDo6PK09RE) is an option. I'm on [tumblr](http://wesninskids.tumblr.com) if you want.

The story of how I died is not a story everybody wants to hear.

People like me have never really wondered how they would die. In glimpses perhaps, like a far-off sense of curiosity that doesn’t quite belong to you, like someone’s forced it out of you. Then, when it could get dangerous, I’d spend thorough minutes listing all the ways things could go wrong. There was only so much I could do to take care of myself, and less so that Nathaniel could ever; aneurysms and internal bleeding and brain trauma, concussions and strokes, those were familiar things we had to grow around and avoid at all cost. Soon enough surviving in the Nest turned into a methodical, clinical game of close calls and deathly risks taken in naïve spurts of ignorance.

People like me, they don’t really learn. People like me, they die, because that seems as inevitable  as a sunset at the end of a day. All the horrors of the Earth won’t stop it from rising again—this time, without me.

You don’t really get to curse your own disappearance when you die. Guilt and anger and sorrow are all things clearly remembered but out of reach, stuck somewhere between your ribs and your heart, throbbing lightly from time to time, choked into silence against your will. You don’t get to decide if it’s fair or not, and the bitterness of grudges and rancor won’t bring you back to life.

I think it’s a good thing I don’t feel dead. It’s like floating, above water, a sea without waves—it’s like silently flying in never-ending skies devoid of colors and clouds and birds. It’s a lonely thing but warmth and heat and compassion are far too foreign, and you only get to stand where you once stood and assess the damages you’ve left behind when you died. The brunt of my own disappearance, oh—a dark and sensible thing, a shaky box of souvenirs all tagged with _handle with care_.

It’s much easier, being dead. Suddenly nobody expects anything from you and you’re free to go, perhaps not for long, and you feel like being free at last is the reward of your existence. The sadness of it would crush me alive if I wasn’t already dead; the delicate necessity of death to finally be whole. And though everything is blurry and vague and quiet, there is still so much to hear and see and realize, maybe too much to be truly _dead_.

I examined my death with the same care I did everything else. Thoroughly, taking my time to linger on the details, more out of caution than sheer interest. It didn’t really matter in this case: nothing that I’d ever witness would bring me back to the plane of existence I had been swiftly evacuated from. Being dead isn’t much trouble: knowing there is no going back is a little rougher. For me, at least. Or should I say—for Nathaniel.

All my life he had been there, standing on the sidelines like some part of the picture I thought would never disappear. I didn’t question it and I didn’t linger. It was there, and I assumed it would always be. Looking back now, it’s not hard to realize all the things I missed, subconsciously perhaps—a knowing glance, an offered palm, words that were necessary for neither of us but still quietly given. There was no game, no score, no payback. It was all give and give and receive, blindly, like it might save us.

He cried—for days.

 

He didn’t show it at first, too shaken by the brutality of my death that he couldn’t breathe and couldn’t think and couldn’t sleep. He was simply there, perhaps because he didn’t have a choice, and didn’t linger on my side of the room, now unoccupied and emptied, and he didn’t look for me anywhere. I was gone.

Somehow, he was already gone, too.

 

Then, after a few days, it slowly forced the air out of his lungs like hurt was such a violent thing he couldn’t handle it. Nonchalance suited him well, I think, and the way his face twisted into furious streams of salty tears was by far the most pathetic thing I had ever seen. The most beautiful, too. A boy who never cried, touched by a hand so fierce, death’s, that he could hardly stop his tears long enough to breathe in.

At first I thought he was afraid. Then I realized he was missing me. And from that moment on, he never quite stopped missing me again.

I would have gladly told him. That I was there, that I was watching over him. It wasn’t much and it certainly wasn’t enough, but there’s only so much a dead body can do. Mine was buried somewhere in West Virginia, and nobody was allowed to grieve. Kevin dealt with the loss with tiny bottles of alcohol he’d stolen from older Ravens, and Nathaniel did what he could: he survived. Day after day after day, waiting for a sign though he knew there wouldn’t be any.

I wasn’t sure I could give any, at least. But then—then he was sitting on the edge of my naked mattress, looking down at his palms like he could see my blood still staining his callous skin. I brushed a shoulder with delicate fingertips and, and he shivered. He _shivered_. I stood there, amazed, wondering if shivers were simply the branch point of two planes that were never supposed to meet. When I tried again, my own hand felt right through him and he didn’t budge.

It was a slight comfort, and even more of an uncertainty; but I held onto it still.

There he is now, searching for anything, because he would take anything, and he finds nothing. It breaks him. He’s alone and there’s no changing it. And suddenly I feel guilty for the abandon—and it isn’t much, it’s a slight sing of pins and needles deep inside my heavy chest, it’s the ghost of a sensation that was once there, the remains of a life now insignificant.

 

He sat in the same exact place the day after. It was minutes before the usual night schedule, and he couldn’t bring himself to go back to his bed, and he sat on mine instead, bringing his knees up to rest his elbows there, mindlessly pulling at his own hair like it could give him a sort of satisfaction. It was never enough and he kept pulling, pulling and pulling, face twisting in discomfort and _pain_ I knew was more than that.

 _I’m here_ , I said. He didn’t hear me.

And suddenly I was grateful not to feel anything.

 

Like a frail thing once shaky, he grew more and more unstable with the days, slipping out of Riko’s controlling frame and turning every rule upside down. Riko’s kingdom was crumbling one minute at a time and he couldn’t do anything to piece it back together; his knife long gone, his monster going nuts. They had seen Nathaniel Wesninski crawl back to the darkness flowing in his veins like a curse before, but it had never came close.

Where Nathaniel had once been reckless and taunting, a pig-headed child that wouldn’t fall in line along the others, the instigator that liked to pick more fights than necessary and rarely cared about the damages he inflicted upon himself in the process, he was now something else, something blunt and harsh and unshakeable, like he had nothing to left to lose because he had already lost everything.

It was a meek reassurance at first, like the proof I needed to know I wasn’t forgotten. That, even though I was my gone and there was no living trace of my existence in Castle Evermore, Nathaniel would remember me for the both of us. He would force his Ravens to turn their heads and obey when he said _look, Jean was there, Jean existed too_.

He cried in my exy jersey until it turned into a panic attack, sitting on the floor in the empty showers. The day after the rest of my equipment was taken back and thrown away, and then there was nothing left, nothing but the cruel gap between Nahaniel’s locker and Kevin’s.

 

It didn’t take long for Tetsuji to replace me. He needed someone as soon as possible, someone ready to take my place on the starting lineup. Substitutes took it upon themselves to hold the team together in the meantime, and soon enough someone walked in with black and red jerseys. The number was the same—the name, foreign in my ears and bitter on my tongue. Nathaniel punched the player senseless and walked away.

 

“Jean,” he said as he sat where he’d always sit now; on the edge of my empty bed with slouched shoulders and a tired grown. It grew deeper and deeper, forcing wrinkles onto his forehead, twisting his face into something furious and black and terrible. He’d said the word like he couldn’t remember the weight of it on his tongue, and wanted to try it again, wanted to feel it one last time. It didn’t matter that nobody answered.

He called my name again, and then he got up like he knew I could hear it. “Fuck you,” he snarled. It was scorching rage and it was disgust. “Fuck you!” he yelled, and then he looked around like he was somehow searching for my tall shadow. He didn’t see anything. “I hate you so fucking much.”

“Moi aussi,” I said. He didn’t hear it.

I walked up to his trembling silhouette, brushed a careful finger across his cheek and he shivered again, rolling tense shoulders to make it leave. When I stretched my fingers and rested a flat palm there, he opened his eyes—and it struck me with a violence I had forgotten. The chilly blue of his unforgiving eyes, the anger constantly warring with sorrow, the determination not to bend before anything. It was so real and familiar it was unsettling, and I watched as Nathaniel frowned in sheer confusion, cautiously and hesitantly raising a hand to hover his own cheek.

He swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as his nostrils flared, and then he was gone.

“Come back,” I said aloud—and though I thought I’d seen him vaguely turn his head to the side, he didn’t come back.

 

It turned into a heart-breaking routine after that. Him, sitting on my empty bed until the time would come someone would take my place at his sides. Me, standing invisible before him, pleading in silence for him to see me. I wasn’t sure I could even see myself.

There was no certainty in it, but a part of me _knew_ he _knew_. It was there, hanging in the quiet, in the darkness, floating in-between us like it could tear the gaps of our worlds apart. For a minute we were together; the other we weren’t. Sometimes he was so out of reach my hands would fall back into the void, my own inexistent flesh disappearing to let his exist.

I feel like he could sense it. Fingers on his cheek, brushing a shoulder, cautiously tracing the outline of his jaw or dipping into his hair. He shivered and shivered and shivered—to the point where he’d turn around, startled whenever he’d shiver in the middle of a game. It punched the focus and momentum out of him too many times, him looking for me in the crowd and perhaps on the court where I once stood. When he found nothing, it was easier to ignore Riko’s aggressive Japanese and the black looks he got from most Ravens. A little less so to forget the unsettling feeling rolling up his spine, shaking his core awake.

He didn’t really leave. He didn’t try to make me leave, either. There was no point in killing a ghost. No point in asking someone already dead to disappear forever. Perhaps I could, and perhaps I even would, but it wouldn’t benefit any of us and we knew it. The striking necessity of each other was sharper than a blade sliding deeply into our chests. It was worse. It was terror and loneliness and panic. It was silence and empty space. It was being hurt and having no one to patch you up. It was coming back to a quiet room and knowing it would be quiet still in the morning. It was missing the little touches, the little words, the forbidden warmth of someone you’d once known. It was missing someone you couldn’t have, missing them with such horrifying force that he sometimes had to pinch your wrist to blood only to remind you you’re still alive.

It was the risk of being paired-up in Evermore. Sharing everything—sharing so much that you didn’t have anything left once the other was out of the picture. A lonely half of a whole couldn’t go too far. And more than he missed me, Nathaniel didn’t want anyone to replace me.

 

I started to feel it, then. The urge—hard to describe, pulling my focus away from him day after day. It was an odd sensation, one I had never felt before, something fierce grabbing the back of my neck and forcing my eyes in a direction I thought would lead nowhere.

Somehow still, I knew I had to go.

I was running out of time, and it was overwhelming, not knowing, not being able to, not really being sure. There was surely no going back from where I was heading. Nathaniel would be abandoned—once again. He’d be alone. He’d be alone and I’d be alone, too. Perhaps I’d be appeased, light and appeased, but he’d still be alone somewhere on another plane, and he’d still miss me, and I’d still miss him back. The thought was as terrible as it was overwhelming. And truly, it felt like dying for the second time.

 

I didn’t have to look to search for him. He’d never really left. Maybe he thought it could bring me here, maybe he thought routines and familiarity were the best chances he had to catch a glimpse of my inexistent soul. Maybe he even thought he could draw me closer. Maybe he thought that would be enough.

He’d gotten into the habit of talking about his day as he sat on my bed, toying with the tag hanging out of the mattress without really reading it. He’d talk about Riko in a strained yet amused French, and he’d talk about Kevin’s bright future and how shaken he’d been by my death, too. He’d talk about practice and drills and games, talk about Court and futures I couldn’t have, possibilities endlessly spread out before him like he had the world. I listened without ever failing and I wanted him to take all of them. I wanted him to live.

I wanted him to stop sobbing in the showers when he’d be the only one left and tears could mingle without deceiving him. I wanted him to stop jerking awake in the middle of the night, staring at my bed like I was supposed to be here to comfort him from his nightmares. I wanted him to stop looking back as though hopeful to see me, to feel me, to sense me. I wanted him to stop trying. I wanted him to heal. I couldn’t go if he was broken. I couldn’t stomach it.

I got close to his face and searched for my voice—or so I thought it was. “Je m’en vais.”

He felt something tickle both his cheeks and put his own hands there as though to caress mine. I couldn’t feel the touch, but knowing it was there was enough. He knew.

The urgency was palpable, and perhaps was it that, that finally got him to look up. His frown was harsh and ugly, all mixed hurt and panic, and I couldn’t even kiss it away.

My hands slid upwards to cup his face and when I tried to angle it, he obediently pulled his neck back. I watched, amazed, not really knowing if it was me or him who had done that. He seemed confused as he looked up, examining the void to try and imagine my familiar face. I knew he wasn’t imagining me smiling—he never did.

“Something’s wrong,” he said.

“Je m’en vais,” I repeated. Something shook inside me and I thought perhaps he could sense it too.

He did. “No.” It left no room to protest and it was as cold as he could be. It was an order and a request, but it was a plea, too, like the terror radiating from my dead body was enough to make him realize.

That I couldn’t stay. That I wouldn’t be able to.

“Je m’en vais,” I whispered, and rested my forehead against his. Saying goodbye had never felt so terrible. There was too much to say and nothing he could possibly hear. “Je m’en vais, je m’en vais, je m’en vais.”

I parted dry lips and put them on his forehead. They didn’t move, and he didn’t move either. It was the closest thing to an embrace we’d ever come to since I was dead—and he was too afraid to break the link to move a finger. He barely breathed. He _did_ choke back ugly sobs, squeezing his eyes shut like it would make everything go away. I wished for it too.

“I miss you,” he said. “Fuck, I miss you so bad. I’ll always miss you.”

His voice was raw with honesty, so white and clear it was almost painful to hear. I pressed the ghost of a kiss on his skin and pulled away—and he felt it instantly, reaching for his cheeks and gently tapping, like somehow he could check for my palms. They were gone and he knew it.

It was like growing cold out of sudden. Of perhaps the cold was me.

He closed his eyes and left his hands there, knowing a little too well there was no point in hoping. In searching. In trying again and again. He was about to lose me again and he didn’t know how to deal with that, and me, oh, me, I was so out of it, so truly dead, so very fucking hurt. Not the twisting pain of hurt: but the ruins of it, everywhere, turning white nights into nightmares. I was a bunch of broken pieces nobody could fix back together. I was gone.

“It’s okay,” he whispered after the panic was gone, too. I wasn’t sure if the words were for me. “It’s going to be okay.”

When he opened his eyes, I was gone again.

 

And that’s all there is. Life stops where it stops. It’s turning back again and again until you can’t anymore—it’s hanging onto the last bits of life and hope and warmth you can collect and then there’s nothing left. Nothing for you anyways.

It’s being banned from existence, being forced out of people’s lives and memories. Slowly they forget your voice, then your smile and the shaky rhythm of your laughter, then it’s your face and how terribly your eyes shine when you’re happy. And suddenly there’s nothing left but crumbs nobody picks up.

The trace of a hand on a wall everyone passes by, a wrinkled photograph pinned to a wall nobody looks at anymore, the lingering caress on a cheek that’s forgotten what it feels like. It’s the trail I’ve left everyone I’ve ever been, the traces of me, the proof I was there too. The proof I was once real and important. That people cared for me. That _he_ cared for me.

And he never truly stopped. I didn’t realize it, at first, thinking he’d forgotten all about me like everyone else would and had already. My side of the room was filled again, and a new number four took my place eventually. Nathaniel didn’t sit on the edge of my bed anymore, and he didn’t linger, and he didn’t look up—but there was something, not in the presence but in the absence: it was the way he didn’t let anyone touch his cheeks like he feared, perhaps, it would wash the traces of me away. He was okay being alone. What he’d gotten from was far more than he’d been supposed to.

Ghosts aren’t supposed to say goodbye.

He never told anyone. A boy of secrets and darkness, brushing his own cheek with the back of his fingers and closing his eyes—here and there, when nights would get cold and lonely. He’d forgotten it all: my voice and my laughter and my eyes, everything. But I was still there, somewhere, locked in his memories, a brush of a hand, cold lips against his skin, a whispered goodbye he knew I’d tried to get through. It was enough.

And I was never coming back—from anywhere.

 

Truly, the story of how I died isn’t a story anyone wants to hear. I won’t tell it. I prefer the story of how I survived.

It starts with a boy, and his name is Nathaniel. I was safe from death, untouchable, a survival through ages and storms. Someone loves you and then, suddenly, you’re immortal.

**Author's Note:**

> For the French:  
> 1\. Me too.  
> 2\. I'm leaving. (Repeated until death. _Ouch, death puns. Too soon?_ )


End file.
